National Catholic Register portal reports on “Both Hands,” a Christian nonprofit that pairs adoption fundraising with service projects for widows, completing 1,652 projects across 46 states and raising more than $25 million since 2008. The article presents this as a model of Christian charity, quoting James 1:27 and featuring testimonials from adoptive families and ministry founders. Yet beneath the veneer of praiseworthy activity lies a fundamentally naturalistic framework that reduces the supernatural life of grace to organized philanthropy, omits the Church’s salvific mission entirely, and reflects the post-conciliar inversion of the spiritual order — where the corporal works of mercy are severed from their theological roots and repackaged as community programming.
The Corporal Works of Mercy Without the Theological Virtues
The article’s entire framework rests on James 1:27: “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God and the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” This is the sole scriptural foundation offered, and it is wielded selectively. The author and quoted individuals treat this verse as a programmatic mandate for social service, while ignoring the verse’s second clause — “to keep oneself unstained from the world” — which presupposes the life of sanctifying grace, the sacramental system, and the pursuit of holiness as the precondition for any authentically Christian act.
St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that the corporal works of mercy are acts of charity only when performed in the state of grace and directed toward the supernatural end of eternal life with God. Outside this framework, feeding the hungry or clothing the naked, however commendable materially, remain natural virtues at best — or, worse, mere humanitarianism indistinguishable from that of secular organizations. The Catechism of the Council of Trent is explicit: “Unless our works proceed from a pure intention and a good motive, they cannot be accounted meritorious before God.” Nowhere in the article is there any mention of grace, the sacraments, confession, the Holy Eucharist, or the necessity of a right intention ordered toward the salvation of souls. The widow is served deck-staining and handrails. The child is brought closer to a home. But the soul — both the widow’s and the volunteers’ — is entirely absent from the narrative.
This is not accidental. It is the hallmark of the post-conciliar revolution: the reduction of Christianity to social activism, where the “Church” becomes a service organization and the Faith becomes a motivation for community improvement projects. Pius XI warned precisely against this in Quas Primas: “The Kingdom of Christ is primarily spiritual and relates mainly to spiritual matters.” The reign of Christ is not advanced by staining decks, however practically useful that may be.
The Omission of the Church and the Sacramental Order
The article refers repeatedly to “Christian nonprofit organization,” “church community,” and “parish communities,” but never once identifies the Catholic Church as the one true Church founded by Christ, the necessary means of salvation, or the dispenser of the sacraments. The widow in Cincinnati receives landscaping and an air purifier. Does she receive the Last Rites? Does she have access to a valid confessor? Is the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass offered for her intention? We are told she wept and said, “I thought God had forgotten about me… But this just tells He still cares for me.” This is a natural emotional response to material assistance. But where is the supernatural consolation that only the Church can provide? Where is the priest? Where is the Eucharist?
The Cerises are described as “a Catholic couple from Cincinnati” who “entrusted this process of adoption to” St. Joseph. Admirable in itself. But the article’s framing reduces their Catholicity to a cultural identity marker. Their parish community is described as a support network for the adoption process — not as the locus of sacramental life, catechesis, and the formation necessary to raise children in the Faith. St. Joseph is invoked as a source of “peace and intercession,” but there is no mention of a novena, a priestly blessing, or the Church’s liturgical tradition surrounding foster fatherhood. The supernatural is reduced to sentiment; the sacramental is replaced by the organizational.
This silence is deafening and deliberate. It reflects what St. Pius X identified as the fundamental error of Modernism: “The Church listening cooperates in such a way with the Church teaching in defining truths of faith, that the Church teaching should only approve the common opinions of the Church listening” (Proposition 6, Lamentabili sane exitu). The “common opinion” of the post-conciliar era is that the Church exists to serve human needs as defined by human judgment — not to teach, govern, and sanctify souls for eternity.
Adoption as Cause, Not Vocation
The article presents adoption as a “pro-life” imperative and a response to the “barrier” of costs ranging from $40,000 to $85,000. Kimberly Henkel notes that 97% of prospective adoptive parents view expenses as a barrier. The entire Both Hands model is designed to overcome this financial obstacle through community fundraising paired with widow service.
There is nothing inherently wrong with adopting children or seeking financial assistance to do so. The Church has always honored the care of orphans as a work of mercy. But the article’s framing is revealing in what it omits: adoption is presented entirely in naturalistic terms — as a response to a social problem (children in foster care), a financial challenge (adoption costs), and a community-building exercise (bringing parishioners together). Missing entirely is the supernatural dimension: the salvation of the child’s soul, the formation of the child in the Catholic Faith, the duty of parents to raise children for Heaven rather than merely for a comfortable earthly life.
Pius XI wrote in Quas Primas that “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men.” The same principle applies to the family: it is not merely a social unit but a domestic church, ordered toward the sanctification of its members. When adoption is stripped of this supernatural finality and presented as a “pro-life” cause equivalent to serving babies and the elderly, it becomes another expression of the naturalism condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors: “No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure” (Proposition 58).
The “Community” as Substitute for the Mystical Body
Throughout the article, the word “community” appears as a refrain. The Cerises speak of their “broader church community” becoming part of their future child’s story. Henkel describes Springs of Love as supporting families “within parish communities through mentorship, formation and spiritual support.” Olson envisions Both Hands as a model where “the wider Christian community” welcomes a child.
This is the language of the post-conciliar ecclesiology that replaced the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ with the Church as a human community organized around shared values and mutual support. The People of God model — condemned in its modernist form by St. Pius X — reduces the Church from a divinely instituted hierarchical society to a voluntary association of believers engaged in common projects. “The organic structure of the Church is subject to change, and the Christian community, like the human community, is subject to continuous evolution” (Proposition 53, Lamentabili). This is precisely the error embedded in the article’s vision: the Church as a network of support groups, not as the ark of salvation.
The article’s emphasis on “asking for help” and “humbling yourself” to contact businesses for donations, while practically sensible, further illustrates the naturalistic orientation. The supernatural means of obtaining graces — prayer, fasting, almsgiving, the Mass, the intercession of the saints — are entirely absent. God’s providence is invoked in vague terms (“If God is calling you towards something, He will make a way”), but the concrete channels of grace established by Christ — the sacraments, the liturgy, the magisterial teaching — are invisible.
The Widow and the Orphan: Objects of Activism, Not Souls for Whom Christ Died
The most poignant moment in the article is the widow’s tearful testimony: “Thank you. I thought God had forgotten about me… But this just tells He still cares for me. He loves me. He’s providing for me.” This is presented as the emotional climax — the proof that the program works.
But consider what is actually happening. A widow, likely elderly, possibly isolated, receives material assistance from volunteers. She experiences human kindness and interprets it as divine love. This is beautiful on the natural level. But where is the Church’s answer to her deepest need? Where is the priest who can absolve her sins, give her Holy Communion, anoint her if she is dying? Where is the teaching that God’s love is manifested supremely in the Sacrifice of the Cross and the Holy Mass — not in deck-staining and handrails?
The article’s silence on these matters is not merely an omission. It is a revelation of the post-conciliar apostasy: the substitution of human works for divine grace, of social services for the sacraments, of emotional comfort for supernatural consolation. Pius IX condemned this inversion in the Syllabus: “The Church has not the power of defining dogmatically that the religion of the Catholic Church is the only true religion” (Proposition 21). If the Church is not the unique ark of salvation, then any “Christian” organization can claim to serve God’s purposes through social programs. If the sacraments are not necessary, then a widow’s tears of gratitude at receiving home repairs are sufficient proof of God’s love.
Conclusion: The Catholic Faith Is Not a Fundraising Model
The Both Hands model, as presented in the National Catholic Register, is not Catholic in any substantive sense. It is a well-organized, emotionally compelling, practically effective Christian humanitarian program. It may do genuine natural good. But it is built on the post-conciliar foundation that has gutted the Faith of its supernatural content: the Church as community organizer, the works of mercy as social projects, the Christian life as service activism.
The true religion that is “pure and undefiled before God” is not measured by the number of decks stained or adoption dollars raised. It is measured by the sanctification of souls through the sacraments, the preaching of the full Gospel without compromise, the teaching of the Church’s magisterial authority, and the recognition that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12) — and that name is mediated through the one true Church, not through nonprofit organizations, however well-intentioned.
Until the article’s subjects and authors recognize that the greatest act of charity is to lead a soul to the confessional and to the altar — not to a fundraising page — their works, however impressive by worldly metrics, remain “as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal” (1 Cor. 13:1).
Source:
Where Caring for Widows Meets Adoption Support (ncregister.com)
Date: 01.06.2026